James Bravo's Shotgun Bride. Christine Rimmer

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СКАЧАТЬ pressed those fine lips together, her eyes full of fear for her grandpa. “Would you go up and show them down here?”

      “You bet.” He ran up the stairs and greeted the med techs. “Roberta,” he said. “Sal.” They were local people and he’d known them all his life.

      Sal asked, “Where is he?”

      “In the basement. This way...”

      Roberta and Sal were pros. In no time, they had Levi on a stretcher, an oxygen mask on his face and an IV in his arm. James helped them get Levi up the stairs. As they put him in the ambulance, Addie ran back inside to grab her purse and lock up. Her sweet-natured chocolate Labrador retriever, Moose, followed after her, whining with concern. Addie told the dog to stay. With another worried whine, Moose trotted to the porch and dropped to his haunches. Addie climbed in the back of the ambulance with her grandfather and Roberta.

      Sal went around and got in behind the wheel. James trailed after him.

      “Who blew the hole in the kitchen floor?” Sal asked out the open driver’s window as he started the engine.

      “Levi was cleaning his shotgun.”

      Sal just shook his head. “You’ve got blood on your collar.”

      “It’s nothing. You taking him to Justice Creek General?”

      With a nod, Sal put it in gear.

      A moment later, James stood there alone in the dirt yard a few feet from Levi’s pre-WWII green Ford pickup, which had no doubt been used to kidnap him. Overhead, the sun beamed down. Not a cloud in the sky. It wasn’t at all the kind of day a man expected to be kidnapped on. Gently, he probed the goose egg on the back of his head. It was going to be fine. He was going to be fine.

      Levi, though?

      Hard to say.

      And what about Addie, all on her own at Justice Creek General, waiting to hear if her granddad would make it or not? At a time like this, a woman should have family around her. Her half sister, Carmen, would come from Wyoming. But how long would it take for Carmen to arrive?

      He just didn’t like to think of Addie sitting in a hospital waiting room all alone.

      As the ambulance disappeared around the first turn in the long driveway that led to the road, James took off toward the barn.

      A couple of the horses Addie boarded watched him with mild interest as he jumped the fence into the horse pasture and ran until he got to the fence on the far side. He jumped that, too, and kept on running. Fifteen minutes after leaving Addie’s front yard, he reached his quad cab, which was parked in front of his nearly finished new house. He had a bad cramp in his side and he had to walk in circles catching his breath, now and then bending over, sucking in air like a drowning man.

      There was blood on his tan boots—not much, just a few drops. He pictured old Levi, hitting him on the head and then dragging him to that green Ford truck of his—and not only to the truck, but then out of the truck, into the house at Red Hill and down to the basement. No wonder the old fool had a heart attack.

      As soon as his breath evened out a little, James dug his keys from his pocket and got in his quad cab. He checked his shirt collar in the sunscreen mirror. The blood wasn’t that bad and the bump hardly hurt at all anymore.

      He started the pickup and peeled out of there.

      * * *

      Addie needed to throw up. She needed to do that way too much lately. Right now, however, was not a convenient time. She sat in the molded plastic chair in the ER waiting room and pressed her hands over her mouth as she resolutely willed the contents of her stomach to stay down.

      She had James’s phone in her purse. In her frantic scramble to get in the ambulance with Levi, she hadn’t thought to give the phone back. And then she’d clutched it like a lifeline all the way to the hospital. She’d only stuck it in her purse to free her hands when the reception clerk had given her all those forms to fill out.

      Addie sucked in a slow breath and let it out even slower. Oh, dear Lord, please. Let PawPaw pull through this and let me not throw up now. Everything had happened way too fast. Her mind—and her poor stomach—was still struggling to catch up.

      Her own cell phone was in her purse, too. She’d barely remembered to grab it off the front hall table before racing out the door. She needed to get it out and call Carmen in Laramie. But the nurse had said Levi wouldn’t be in the ER for long. They would evaluate his condition and move him over to cardiac care for the next step. Addie was kind of waiting to find out what, exactly, the next step might be so that she could share it with her sister when she broke the terrifying news.

      A door opened across the room. The doctor she’d talked to earlier emerged and came toward her.

      Addie jumped to her feet, swallowed hard to keep from vomiting all over her boots and demanded, “My grandfather. Is he...?” Somehow she couldn’t quite make herself ask the whole dangerous question.

      “He’s all right for now.” The doctor, a tall, thin woman with straight brown hair, spoke to her soothingly. “We’ve done a series of X-rays and given him medications to stabilize him.”

      “Stabilize him,” Addie repeated idiotically. “Is that good? That’s good, right?”

      “Yes. But his X-rays show that he’s got more than one artery blocked. He’s going to need emergency open-heart surgery. We want to airlift him to Denver, to St. Anne’s Memorial. It’s a Level-One trauma center and they will be fully equipped to give him the specialized care that he needs.”

      Her head spun. Denver. Open-heart surgery. How could this be happening? From the moment she’d caught sight of James Bravo tied to a chair in the basement at Red Hill, nothing had seemed real. “But...he’s never been sick a day in his life.”

      The doctor spoke gently, “It happens like this sometimes. That’s why they call heart disease the silent killer. Too often, you only know you’ve got a problem when you have a heart attack—but I promise we’re doing everything we can to get him the best care there is. You got him here quickly and that’s a large part of the battle. His chances are good.”

      Good. His chances were good. Was the doctor just saying that or was it really true? Addie sucked in air slowly and ordered her queasy stomach to settle down. “Can I see my grandfather, please?”

      “Of course you can. This way.”

      * * *

      In the curtained-off cubicle, Addie kissed Levi’s pale, wrinkled cheek and smoothed his wiry white hair and whispered, as much to reassure herself as to comfort him, “PawPaw, I promise you, everything is going to be fine. You’ll be on the mend before you know it.”

      Levi only groaned and demanded in a rough whisper, “Where’s James?”

      That made her long to start yelling at him again. But he looked so small and shrunken lying there, hooked up to an IV and a bunch of machines that monitored every breath he took, every beat of his overstressed heart. Yelling at him would have to wait until he was better.

      Because he would get better. He had to get better. The alternative was simply unthinkable.

СКАЧАТЬ